Shiny Koi said:
I will agree, at least partially, with that assessment of public schools. I can't say as to your specific examples with the math (though I'm wondering what all you take, considering those 3 and geometry is the entire curriculum. I'm wondering if yours is just integrated), but they have issues with anything other than the norm, and are focused on getting people graduated. I had some issues with grade school, but those are mostly gone at this point (High School)
Back on topic:
America is, shall we say, unique. Most of everything in this thread is a result of holdovers from the post-WWII era, where the US was largely dominant in everything. Russia was the only competitor, and look what happened to it. Our culture is ridiculously widespread - just think of the fact that other countries have to have their own domain extensions to specify that they AREN'T US.
Militarily and politically (international politics), I believe that the States are meddlesome - we are acting as the "world police", something that is literally the job of the UN. Even in the Cold War, we were trying to "protect" the world from communism, and failing miserably at it. (See: Vietnam. Originally there were two countries, just like Korea, but we dumped millions of dollars and thousands of troops into aiding the representative state against the communist state, which was backed by the USSR, and lost.) Any victories on that front were mostly in spite of ourselves. For proof of that, look at the aforementioned USSR.
Apart from this, it is undeniable that the U.S has made more than its fair share of contributions to the world stage - technologically, socially, politically. America had one of the earliest truly representational governments (dang it, it's a republic, not a democracy. The difference is we elect the people who actually make the decisions, because having EVERYONE vote on EVERY decision is just impractical, and has been since the origin of democracy in Athens of ancient Greece), and was key in the development of modern physics (especially electricity) and computers (including the internet)
Despite all of this, the main issue here seems to be the attitude of Americans and other people towards them. To this, I say we are all people - neither saints nor devils, some of us idiots, some of us not. We're no different than the rest of the world, we just have our own (sometimes egotistical) quirks.
TL;DR version:
America has made some amazing accomplishments, but that doesn't mean we're better than everyone else. We're human, too, and our people and our government make mistakes.
P.S. That was the most amazing necro I've ever seen, good job! Been dead over a year and only lasted a few days, even if there were 400+ posts... been going pretty well, too.
P.P.S. Some of the sarcastic stuff on here was massively entertaining, and the serious (rational) stuff was also massively educational. Nice waste of a couple hours, I guess. (Except I want to get up in 5 hours to listen/watch to Notch live. Dang.)
. Feel free to try again though.
